Lyndsey Brogan, $1.99, ISBN 978-1386285878
Cozy Mystery, 2014

Lyndsey Brogan’s Crushcaked to Death is tad misleading in the sense that it is marketed as a cozy mystery featuring a protagonist, Millie Munro, so I assume at first that Millie is going to be Jessica Fletcher-ing her way around a murder to locate the villain behind the dastardly deed.

What I get is more of… well, there is a murder, of a bridegroom just before the wedding, but the cops do most of the investigating, which is done off-screen, while our heroine, the event manager of the hotel The Corinth, runs around trying to keep everything in order.

You see, there are two more weddings that are supposed to take place after this one, and she has to inform the people involved in those weddings of the abrupt postponements of their happy nuptials. Perhaps wrestling with hungry lions in the Colosseum would be an easier task…

Oh, and the poor guy chokes on a cake and dies. It’s not like he’s crushed to death by a gigantic wedding cake, if case anyone is getting wild ideas after reading the title!

Well, this is a pretty readable thing, although it’s easy to guess the murderer and their motive because it’s a very common one for murder mysteries of this sort.

I’m far more intrigued by the way Millie is running around defusing the drama among the guests and her colleagues, however, than the mystery itself, mostly because the mystery seems to be an afterthought, or perhaps a plot device to get things rolling, instead of the front and center of the story. It’s more hotel management than homicide solving, in other words.

The whole thing is something I don’t come across every day, so the novelty of the whole thing has me feeling most engaged as I turn the pages.

However, the author’s narrative style could be improved. The balance of showing and telling is tilted towards telling a little too much, and the result is a story that can get tad dry to read. Because this isn’t a particularly long story, it isn’t that bad, fortunately, and the story comes to a close before things become too monotonous to read here.

All in all, it’s alright, so long as people come into this one not expecting a protagonist that actively solves a mystery.